I recently played through a demo for a game called Pinball Spire on steam, and it put me in the mood for playing pinball games. Unfortunately, and I don’t know if this is just due to me having bad google-foo, there don’t seem to be that many on Steam that catch my interest.
So figured I may as well make a thread asking about what the “state of the art” of pinball video games is. Some of the ones I’ve played:
- Sonic Spinball: Very janky, but very unique and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone try to do anything similar to it.
- Pokémon Pinball and Sonic Pinball Party: Fairly standard pinball games, tbh. They’re both on handhelds so they can’t do that much.
- Demon’s Tilt and Xenotilt: Just really fun feeling arcade pinball games with a really fun tilt mechanic.
So yeah, know any good PC or console pinball games?
Oh, and can someone help me: I vaguely remember seeing a stream of a pinball game for the Mega Drive/SNES where the ball goes through multiple tables. Does anyone know what that game was called, if it even exists?
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Yoku’s Island Express might be up your alley- it’s part platformer, part pinball, and it’s on sale.
This. Yoku is a great game. If it piques your interest, play it!
Space cadet pinball can be installed on any system you have and is still a blast to play.
I was gonna be absolutely livid if nobody mentioned space cadet
I know what I’m doing this weekend
The OG: Space Cadet Pinball.
There is one I remember hearing about a while back and I want to find it again that was really dope because it was a full on simulator and had a easy to use builder to build your own tables. People were recreating actual tables for it, though only those in the public domain.
Space Cadet was one of Maxis’ Full-Tilt Pinball tables. Afaik it’s not in the public domain, Microsoft licensed it from Maxis. However, I’m not sure EA would actually enforce the copyright unless someone was making a lot of money off it.
By the way, The Windows XP version has been ported to WASM, and you can play it in a browser.
Space cadet has been reverse engineered and can be installed in Linux through flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.k4zmu2a.spacecadetpinball
Metroid prime pinball was incredible, especially with the use of the rumble pack. Underrated accessory for the DS.
Made by the same team as the Pro Pinball games, which is why it’s so darned good.
I play a lot of Pinball FX and Pinball FX2. The only downer is that they’re huge downloads, even if you only own a few tables.
This comment isn’t helpful, but I really love Demon’s Tilt. I appreciate this post and the suggestions here!
I just finished a long fever with Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire. Trying to build your collection of Pokemon across sessions is so addicting. I couldn’t believe how good I was by the end. I highly recommend it, just use a GBA emulator.
Dino Land for Genesis was a lot of fun!
Not sure if it’s the same sonic pinball game but there may be another one.
Metroid Pinball was great I remember.
I’ll have to remember the others I played as a kid. They used to be more popular
Grab an Amiga emulator and get Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions.
Absolutely, pinball dreams and fantasies are classics and still fun on DOS. Still have pinball dreams and pinball fantasies on my iPhone from when they were first ported. Great when I’m offline on a plane, not so great for the person in the next seat when I’m trying to tilt.
Zombie Rollerz - A Rougelike Pinball Game
While you’re looking for a good pinball game on PC and console, play Vector Pinball on your phone:
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.dozingcatsoftware.bouncy/
It’s simple and fantastic.
Off the top of my head:
- The entire Pro Pinball series
- Yoku’s Island Express
- Creature in the Well
- Pinball FX3
- 3D Ultra Pinball: The Lost Continent
- Metroid Prime Pinball
- Epic Pinball
- Addiction Pinball
The MD game you’re thinking of is likely to be Psycho Pinball.
Pinball Deluxe Reloaded has been an excellent time-waster on my phone for a while now. It’s available on PC too.
Three of four Pro Pinball games are available on GOG. They’re probably on the more realistic side of pinball games, effectively simulating a single table down to aspects like scratching, aging and blemishes. That’s all optional though, you can just install and play. I don’t know how well they’ve aged since it’s been a few years since I last touched one of them. But I’ve always found them fun, with great visuals and sound, even though I’m pretty inept at pinball in general.
